New Mexico Earthquakes Linked to Wastewater Injection

New Mexico Earthquakes Linked to Wastewater Injection by Becky Oskin, April 23, 2013, OurAmazingPlanet
An ongoing earthquake swarm in New Mexico and Colorado, which includes Colorado’s largest earthquake since 1967, is due to underground wastewater injection, researchers said Friday (April 19) at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City. The earthquakes are concentrated near wastewater injection wells in the Raton Basin, where mining companies are extracting methane from coalbeds. The basin, which is actually a series of rock layers exposed in the Rocky Mountain foothills, stretches from northeastern New Mexico to southern Colorado. Since 2001, seismicity has increased rapidly in the region, said Justin Rubinstein, a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research geophysicist and lead author of one of several studies on the Raton Basin presented at the meeting. The rapid rise in earthquakes followed a significant increase in wastewater injection starting in 1999, he said. Wastewater injection is the disposal of water and brine produced from fracking. When mining companies extract resources via fracking, they inject water to make new fractures. After the water is removed, it’s usually stored nearby, in porous rocks deep underground. [Emphasis added]

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